


the illusion of forever

by grey_dawn



Series: adelina amouteru, free at last [1]
Category: The Young Elites Series - Marie Lu
Genre: Bittersweet, But only a bit, F/M, Fix-It, Fluffy Ending, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Introspection, Post-Series, Shameless, The Midnight Star, The Rose Society, is a happy ending so hard, marie lu, the young elites - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-09-20 22:13:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9518306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grey_dawn/pseuds/grey_dawn
Summary: adelina amouteru wishes to see the faces of her loves once more, after rebirth as a constellation.





	1. adelina amouteru is no longer the white wolf

**Author's Note:**

> i know there are very few people here, but i love marie lu's works and wrote this in support of her series, the young elites, because i found her legend series harder to write for.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> adeline thinks about what she once had every night, when she walks the earth again.

**[ prologue ]**

Every midnight she will unfurl her body and stretch it out, cramped by the long hours of daylight. From afar, one might see the shifting twinkles of light off her silver hair, her clothes, and even her eyelashes.

Adelina Amouteru will wait, pacing the earth with bare feet. The first few weeks she senses rustles in nearby bushes or trees, instinctively she tries to weave illusions of invisibility upon herself, paint pain onto the wolf or rabbit or deer, and shield herself with the powers the gods once gave her, but took back.

The gaping hole inside her throbs even more then. But that is not when she aches most acutely for her illusions.

It is when she bends over a lake and sees her face, flickering between perfect features she once had but does not recognise and a scarred face with a single grey eye. It is then she yearns for her powers, because she desperately wishes to see Magiano's face staring back at her with pure, sincere joy. It is then her tears, glinting in stardust, fall into the water, because she fears that one day the sweet face of her sister, filled with empathy, will turn blurry in her mind. If she can weave their faces onto her own, just once, she thinks, just once, she would remember. She has to.

So Adelina Amouteru, once queen of the Sealands, roams the earth with her bare feet, watching helplessly as the sun rises, bringing a new day for everyone else, but signalling her time to return to the sky.

She brings with her her aching, hollowed heart, whispering apologies for everyone – Dante, Gemma, Enzo, her father, even, but most of all – her Violinetta, her Magiano.


	2. adelina amouteru is alone again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> adeline feels unsure of who she is, and worries constantly about violate and magiano, who she'd left behind.

**[ one ]**

Eventually she stops pacing so urgently. She stops trying to draw iron-red blood from her wrists, because only stardust spills from her wounds, and the lines she draws across her wrists disappear the next midnight. Eventually, how she once tugged at threads of energy, fooling the senses, turns blurry, like she has myopia and she is staring at something far away.

It is far away, anyway. Her days as queen, her days as a powerful Young Elite… her days with those she trusted, mostly, and those she loved. Still loves.

Adelina Amouteru lies on a field in Kenettra, where she knows no one will find her. Her hair, no longer grey but instead silver, spreads out in tendrils around her. The storm her whispers once brewed has vanished, dissipated, left her. Staring up at the stars every night, as she sees her constellation, she just hopes they’ve noticed it.

Months pass, but she is just as young as when she traded her soul; her face, slight body, is immortalised in stardust. She isn’t sure if she has one eye, or two – her reflection still flickers, but she wills herself to see only one. Because it is the removal of that eye, the searing, overwhelming pain of the removal, that helped create the White Wolf.

And it is in spite of her one-eyedness that Magiano cared.

Then the passage of time turns irrelevant; she still returns to walk the earth every midnight, her silver illuminating dark fields, but she no longer cares to count the days, or to move with urgency. Dawn will come anyway, after all. It will always come.

As she feared, her mind’s eye is no match for time. She cannot weave her loves’ faces onto her own, just to see them looking back at her again. She only sees her own perfect/ruined face. She does not know which face really is hers, after all. 

Sometimes she converses with Compasia’s lover, and sometimes even Compasia herself, who sneaks away from her duties for brief moments to greet her lover. Compasia is so much like Violetta, sometimes, caring and loving with no strings attached, but also formidable, firm. She understands Adelina, but tells her of  Violetta’s peaceful reign, and of the love she showed for Adelina, which compelled Compasia herself to beg for Adelina’s soul.

But no one tells her about Magiano. Is he alive, or is he dead?

Adelina Amouteru concludes that he, and Violetta, are as alive as her memories of them.

And as dawn comes to collect her, to bring her back to the sky, she allows the fear to burrow deep into her – out of sight, out of mind, and it will stay dormant. It must.


	3. adelina amouteru, the white wolf, leaps once more

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> adelina's loneliness ends, at least for a while. she wishes for forever, but she'll take what she can get.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was a very short piece that i had finished writing long before i posted, but i hope whoever read this enjoyed it! unfortunately i think this is the happiest adelina can get, because eventually magiano will die and leave her, an immortalised constellation.  
> maybe i'll write about that.

**[ two ]**

One midnight, when she descends the skies to tread the earth, to light up the darkest corners of what was once her Kenettra, horse hoofs clopping the ground reach her ears. Wolves she has seen. Deer, rabbit – even the occasional poverty-stricken person, desperately out to scrounge for food. But not a horse – horses are valuable, prized animals.

She has not yet forgotten everything. She spies a sharp twig, grabs it in her hand, and ignores the roughness of it against her now-soft palm. It will heal tomorrow, anyway. But she does not confront as she would have so long ago. She waits, still as the bush she hides behind, for the clip-clopping to fade away. But a voice calls. 

Adelina Amouteru is frozen. Then her feet betray her, her heart leaps in ways it should not, it does not deserve to – and then she is before him.

“Mi Adelinetta,” he breathes, sliding off his horse. He opens his mouth to speak, but closes it again, his eyes, no longer slitted like a cat’s, roaming over her.

Adelina does the same to him, raking him over. He is just as lean as she remembered, and she bets he is just as warm. But he is taller than she remembered – memory of height is so imprecise.

Then his face – slight wrinkles at the corners of his mouth, from smiling so much. Dark braids tumbling to his shoulders, just as she remembered. His eyes – no longer unique, no longer that of a _malfetto_ ’s, but still warm and dark, and piercing.

His gold lute, strapped behind his back, and sparkling clothes, no doubt spun from the finest silks and adorned with the most precious stones, contrasts her plain, silver clothing.

She speaks, finally. “Magiano.”

“That is my name, yes,” A smile plays on his lips.

“Are you real? How did you find me?”

“I’ve travelled so far, for so long, Adelina, that our journey to the gods pales in comparison.”

Silence for a long moment. Then Magiano speaks: “My white wolf.”

And the way he speaks to her, she knows he does not allude to her Elite name. It is just a name she has never heard spoken with such affection before. It unravels her, how he can still carry such joy and speak with such tenderness.

Adelina Amouteru has never aligned with joy, but this time as Magiano pours joy on her, she soaks it in. She hopes – no, wishes – they can stay like this forever.

_end_


End file.
